Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

-----which I find difficult to absorb.

Everybody has feet of clay, to some extent, and no class of the community is above reproach. One thing that RTÉ might now consider is that when politicians go on RTÉ to be interviewed, they are treated as second-class citizens. If someone comes in from an NGO like the Rape Crisis Centre, he or she is thanked for coming along, and he or she gets an easy run. A politician gets a hammering and if he or she is doing well, they pull out something from the bottom drawer just to try and trip him or her up. There are some broadcasters, and I will not mention them by name, who seem to think that if they do not get a dig in at a politician, they have not done a good job. I do not think that is necessary and, curiously, one person who used to do a lot of political broadcasting is Eamon Dunphy. He never did that. He actually gave people ten minutes or a quarter of an hour. I did not leave his studio thinking that he went for my throat, he derided or jeered me or he doubted my bona fides as an undertone to the whole interview.

What has happened recently shows a kind of an "Upstairs Downstairs" situation. Many of the people who work hard must be sorely disappointed by the reputational damage that has been done. Obviously, that is so. I strongly believe that, as a society, we should be willing to subsidise public service broadcasting provided that we get a clear focus on what it is. Is it Ray D'Arcy, or is it not Ray D'Arcy? Maybe I am being unfair to mention his name but is his kind of programme something that needs subsidy? Is 2FM something that needs subsidy? I wonder about that, and I think we have to sit down collectively and ask: what do we really think public service broadcasting is? What is the public element that needs and deserves subsidy?

I was writing in today's The Irish Times- the Minister probably saw it - about the question of the licence fee. The licence fee is indefensible in its present form. A tradesman who has a caravan in County Wexford is required to produce two licences to bring his mobile television down with him and his family for the annual holidays. That is €320 a year, if he has a television at home, and that requires him to earn €600 gross, roughly, whereas a wealthy person who has a mansion in Dublin 6, with a whole load of adult kids in the house and TVs in every room, pays €120. That is not a fair way of subsidising public service broadcasting. The time has come to do what the committee of which I was a member a number of years ago reported. that is, to get the Revenue Commissioners to collect this money, and to use the local property tax model as the way to get it out of every home, building, hotel and business right across the country. It is a bit ridiculous that hotels only have to have one licence, whereas they have to pay the copyright collection agencies a vastly different amount for the artists.

This is an opportunity for us all to reflect on wider issues regarding public service broadcasting. It is not simply a time when, coming into the silly season, we concentrate on scoring points against broadcasters, even if they have scored a fair few points against us in the past.